3 candidates... 2 spots.

@Mithrandir though only 1 good candidate rest are just filler

@joojaa you never know who could be the most excellent mod there ever was. There's also no need to denigrate the candidates...

@Mithrandir right but its hard to vote when you have no history

i would say westside has more history so to speak

But on good and one lucky break isnt that bad

If you want, I can go get 300 rep and run - I'm already a mod elsewhere, why not, if you'r unhappy with your current pool? :P

@Mithrandir i was actually looking for @Wrzlprmft running

@joojaa Yes, that would be good. I was just kidding.

also 125 points in this timeframe is pushing it a bit @Mithrandir

@joojaa I once earned 200 reputation from suggested edits in one day.

@Mithrandir yes, but GD is slower than say Mathematica

Why'd you choose that site, just wondering?

@Mithrandir because of the smaller sites it works very fast in terms of voting

GD is SLOOOW

@joojaa Uhm, a bit of respect, please? :/

its all well but the matter of fact is that we do not have an election, not really

since we do not have participants in elections

so in essence we are choosing who to discard not so much who to elect because we have no choice on the matter

I don't deny that

but that doesn't mean you can just call people 'filler'--especially when they are willing to put a big foot forward to help the community grow.

offcourse i can

i just did

according to you i should not

This discussion is not about semantics.

In anycase there is nobody to vote.

Th ething is the election happens at a very inopportune moment

@joojaa There are actually (currently) 3 legitimate candidates, and if you think any of the 3 candidates are unfit to be moderator for whatever reason, please state so.

So how am i supposed to exercise my power of choosing what I see as a the best choice if i have no choices

@WELZ no offense but like @ZachSaucier points out your contribution is minimal

So i have no way of knowing what if anything you would contribute

While that in it self is not bad, there is room for a wild horse

But 3 candidates is too few if we need to choose 2 candidates.

@joojaa I agree with that

@joojaa unless the two people that really should be (IMO) mods were running :P

@ZachSaucier sure...

The reason I dont nominate is that i rarely do any moderation

indeed

And im way too unpredictable for political correctness of things

also true :P

So i have nothing to contribute

So the question is are we happy how things are being done?

are you asking in terms of the election or the site in general?

general

In anycase i have descided not to vote

I feel like you're a cup half empty kind of guy, joojaa :D

No im not

I just feel that having a election with this few participants is simply not an election

an election with 1 participant is an election. Just not a very meaningful one

Yeah they used to do that in USSR and seem to continue on thet road.

@joojaa Comparing GDSE to Communism? uh uh, absolutely not

@WELZ Not really

But one can not be democratic if there is no choice. Its just the same as totalitarianism.

it could be democratic

but it is not

Also why do we have primaries?

@joojaa but not for the reasons that happens in those countries - people here aren't too intimidated and fearful to run

@joojaa we do

it starts in a couple days

@ZachSaucier 6 hours*

w.e

@WELZ how do we know same does not apply here?

because the way i see it thst exactly what has happened

Let's start with you: @joojaa, are you too intimidated or scared to run? :/

LOL

No but i work outside the boundary of nice anyway

The same goes with pretty much everyone - I'm not scared to run - I doubt I'm gonna get elected with the current competition, but when election finishes and life goes back to normal for me - nothings changed really.

No but there is a side that is and has been constantly supressed

I will have no regrets if I don't get in.

@WELZ what does this have to do with the discussion?

@ZachSaucier , @joojaa was saying that people might be scared or whatever, and I'm saying it's not true and there's nothing to be scared of, because nothing happens if you don't get in, very simply - it's ok to try

so because you aren't scared it means no one has reason to be scared?

no no, I was saying that nothing can happen.

and if people are concerned they should bring up their concerns so that they can be addressed properly.

I did and what good did that accomplish?

3 new starred comments telling me not to

@joojaa Don't twist my words, joojaa.

You can utter any kind of critique on any amount of candidates, as long as you do so respectfully and backed.

Im not critiquing the candidates in critiquing the way we go about the election

What else would you have us do? We need two new mods, and there are three candidates. Is there any way we could have this be less moot in your opinion?

Then invite the mods

It's worked like this across all of SE for years. If you have a problem with the process, take it to meta.se--we can't change it.

@joojaa I don't see what difference that would make. All mods agree on this

Sure, but it might be a innoprotune memonet to do this

It never is a good moment

and we need the reinforcements now

I'd love to stay and chat but I need to go teach class.

Have a good day @vincent.

you too!

@Mithrandir im starting to thgink your offer is about the best one we have had

I highly doubt that.

Oh boy do i want to see the vote statistics on this one

yep... :D

Okay folks, I want some input from you:

Everything else being unchanged and knowing how people tend to vote in moderator elections, I would most likely beat Westside in the moderator election. If I do not run, Westside will almost certainly win (the second slot).

I carefully examined Westside’s actions, comments, reviews, etc. and the worst things I could find is some close decisions that I would have made differently (but that are certainly not catastrophic). I see no reason why he should not make a good moderator – except that he is not super-experienced and active on Meta (neither of which I see as a considerable problem, in particular in a team of moderators).

I on the other hand am not super-enthusiastic about the job. Don’t get me wrong: I like moderation activity, be it as a community or as a diamond moderator (and I know what I am getting into), so flag handling is fine (and that’s most of the job, I know), but when it comes to tackling larger problems, in particular community building, I may lack the enthusiasm.

Also keep in mind that for me, graphic design is almost entirely a hobby, and I thus lack familiarity with the general graphic-design community (not to be confused with the Graphic Design SE community).

@Wrzlprmft I don't see the hobby thing as an issue

Without saying too much I think you should absolutely nominate yourself if you want the position. If you're thinking about it just because people are complaining about the lack of candidates then I'm not going to say either way, it's up to you...

either way... not much time if you are going to nominate yourself :)

@Cai It‘s not a big issue, I agree with, but it also means that I may not be competent to tackle some larger issues and I am, well, not as enthusiastic as I could be.

@Cai I am fully aware of this. Don’t worry, I will not miss the deadline unless I want to.

@Wrzlprmft If you nominate yourself, be honest about that. If the community thinks it's an issue then they will vote accordingly

@Cai That’s exactly the problem: I see no lack of candidates. If two competent people are willing to do the job, that’s fine by me. A moderator election does not need a passable candidate losing to be the real thing. If Westside hadn’t run, I would have happily nominated myself.

(By the way: I do not mean to offend you, @WELZ. You may very well be the best suited person for the job, but given your lack of experience it’s really hard to tell right now, so you are not a passable candidate.)

@Cai That’s what I intend to do, but going by my experience with how people vote, I would have to be overly pessimistic to cancel the effect of my moderator score.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, here’s my question to y’all: Am I missing anything in the above? If yes, you have a little bit less than two hours to convince me.

That particular goes at you, @joojaa.

@Wrzlprmft little less than 1 hour isn't it?

@Cai The election begins at 20:00 UTC. It’s 18:17 UTC. (Correct me if I am wrong; I don’t want to botch this.)

@Wrzlprmft if you don't really feel like being a mod for another community then I don't know why you'd want to run.

Just because a few members are complaining about who nominated themselves should not be a reason IMO

@Wrzlprmft you are right, I always just assume UTC is the same as my time, forgot it's BST now

@Ryan It’s not that I do not like having another diamond, I just do not see myself as a better candidate than Westside, because I am enthusiastic about moderating but not about this particular site. If I weren’t torn about this question, I wouldn’t ask.

@Ryan Sure, but I can understand where their complaints are coming from (though I do not fully agree with them). Hence I rather asked for second opinions before the fact.

Also: Power. Who doesn’t like power?

@Wrzlprmft to be honest im more concerned with the loss of profilic community moderators

also for democracy to work out there has to be some choice

@joojaa in the case of SE that makes absolutely no sense. Democracy is when a community consensus drives the society its within.

@joojaa I understand your issue, but what is the alternative?

Choice in terms of moderator elections doesn't change that the democracy of SE is created through rep first and foremost

@joojaa A lack of choice in democracies is usually a problem, but that’s because it is symptomatic of other issues. If the electorate actually agrees on a course, it’s fine if that’s the only (realistic) option.

But actually GD has a growing dissent

What growing dissent?

Well its qjite clear that we dont exactly have a thriving and excited membership

@Shog9 @GraceNote some members are concerned that 2 new moderators is too much. Would one of you be kind enough to weigh in

Id say its too late now... but still it erodes us. From now on the discussion on meta will be mod to mod

almost no discussion outside of actual moderator issues happens behind closed doors

Even that is barely discussed behind closed doors because most of it is just routine stuff that whoever happens to be on takes care of without discussion first

to be fair, no one other than the current moderators can know how many new mods are needed

not having a thriving user base is an issue, but it's not a reason to not take on extra moderators if they are needed

But we do not see the need

@joojaa maybe you could trust the current mods?

why?

@joojaa that's my point. We don't see so we don't know... why wouldn't you trust that the moderators need the extra help they've asked for?

But thats like saying lets declare war, because we say so

@joojaa how'd you get there?

Well im just pointing out that the sentence "trust me its for you best" is not the most trustgenerating appeal

@joojaa Because they are the only ones who can estimate the moderating workload with sufficient precision anyway. Even if I had access all of GD’s moderator statistics, the moderator chatroom and who is resigning (all of which I do not have), it would take me days to produce a reasonable figure.

@joojaa true, however our current mods I believe we all trust (correct me if I'm wrong) - they've been in the mod position for quite a while, so if someone had an issue I'm sure they would've brought it up

Acrually i have had an issue with how they dealt with a lot of things. But seing how those who had been dealt with got punished i would say that thats a sufficient reason to be silent

@joojaa Generally not, but in this very question, yes. The moderators are the only ones who can decide whether they need more of themselves and it’s not a decision they can abuse by calling for more slots.

@joojaa no, if you have an issue, raise your concerns, - if a mod punishes you for raising your concerns - they are unfit to be mod.

In general yes, but we dont have the manpower to fit those mods

15 minutes to place your nomination folks

@joojaa We have two suitable candidates (if you ask me). That’s enough. If you think that this is not the case, please bring forth arguments now.

Yes but then our community balance shifts too much to mods

W can nolonger have a nonmod discussion since we do not have any active users

I really do not see this happening and I really do not see this as a problem – if the mods are not abusing their power. And then we have worse problems to worry about.

appreciated

@WELZ Just so you know: If there are no three candidates, SE will wait for a third one to run.

@Wrzlprmft oh, well I withdrew, so too late.

Ah well, that were some interesting turns of events.

Gotta answer that questionnaire now, don’t I?

@Wrzlprmft better had

good luck I suppose @Wrzlprmft and @Westside - Cai, you're a given heh

@Ryan what about me lmao

@Ryan you never know... stranger things have happened

well @Cai, I already voted and made you 1st Choice and as soon as you vote you'll get the badge which will bump your score to 39/40 (overqualified IMO)